The internet is sometimes wonderful

The New Neo Posted on by

Such as yesterday, when I was wearing a silk blouse and eating something with salad dressing on it, and a couple of drops of oil dripped on my blouse. I’d had that blouse for many years and had nursed it along oil-free and stain-free for the entire time. But when a blouse’s number is up, it’s up, and I thought yesterday that moment had come.

I was ready if necessary to bid it a fond and thankful farewell after countless years of selfless service, until I thought to Google “removing oil stain from silk blouse,” and many helpful sites popped up with the same suggestion: after blotting the stain, put a heap of something like talcum powder or cornstarch on it and let it sit for many hours, brush it off, and see what you’re got.

I did it overnight with cornstarch, and lo and behold, in the morning I found that underneath the cornstarch what I had was a blouse without a visible stain. Fabulous, no?

Pre-internet, to deal with a problem like that you had to have foresight and actually buy a book of helpful household hints, and then when the disaster struck you had to find the book and the page with the information.

And prior to that, I guess you had to learn that sort of stuff at your mother’s (or father’s) knee.

Similar changes have gone on with cookbooks, at least for me. I used to be a sucker for cookbooks; almost every time I went to a bookstore (remember bookstores?) I’d browse in the cookbook section and several of them would call to me with their near-irresistible siren songs. I used to even take a cookbook or two along with me on certain long trips where I’d be staying with in-laws or other relatives and I’d be called on to cook.

Now? I still have the best of my cookbooks on a bookshelf, but I only consult them on special occasions or for old favorites that I don’t make often and for which I need a brush-up. Every other recipe I get online.

I guess people still buy cookbooks, but I’m not one of them. Of course, I already have more than enough. But curiosity drove me to research the subject (online, of course!), and it turns out that, although the death of the cookbook had been predicted for several years, cookbooks are still doing very well, thank you very much (the article is from 2016):

“It’s at least just as healthy, if not more of a market,” said [editor] Rotella by phone from Manhattan. He did a quick eyeball estimation of his office. “My shelves are full,” said Rotella, who has long covered the cookbook industry and compares the public’s affection for physical over digital cookbooks to the children’s book market, which actually gained ground in 2015. “There’s just something about an illustrated book.”

It’s true. Just as sometimes I prefer the tactile and visual pleasure of strolling down the aisles and looking at the books in a bookstore, or flipping the pages of a catalogue rather than an online search—so, too, are cookbooks often a treat:

“That great blossoming of so much content was wonderful ”” until it was totally oppressive and overwhelming and hard to get through. There was no filter; you became the filter,” said [publisher] Jones, who characterized the act of cozying up to a hardback collection of recipes as a sort of retreat from the world of digital noise of voice prompts, bleeping timers and helpful glossaries into a quiet room of focused satisfaction. “It led to an incredible craving for something that was mind-calming, not illuminated. The consumer response was, ”˜Wow, I want a physical format to hold in my hand; I want to get off of my screen and silence all the disruptions.’”

Even I—inveterate internet user that I am—want to silence those disruptions now and then and chill out with a book.

The middle-aged Aled Jones sings a duet with the young Aled Jones

The New Neo Posted on by

I sent this video to a friend of mine and he commented, “I hear a brilliant treble singing with an okay but nothing-special baritone.”

And I basically agree. But I think it’s almost unbearably poignant to hear the two versions of Jones singing together, and to watch the old clips together with the new. Don’t their (his??) voices blend beautifully?

[NOTE: I’ve written about Aled Jones before, and the wonderful documentary made about him when he was a young pre-pubescent teenager.]

Erythromelalgia : hotfoot Part III

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here.]
[Part II can be found here. You might want to take a look at them to refresh your memory on what on earth I’m talking about.]

The years passed but I never found a doctor who could shed light on what was wrong with my hot red feet. I remember talking to one who said he’d seen at least a few cases like mine. That was a first for me because no other doctor I’d spoken to (and there were many of them) had ever seen even one case that was similar.

I remember another doctor who said he didn’t know what was going on, but he thought my spinal injury had damaged sympathetic nerves that were nearby the site of the damage, and that those nerves were telling my circulatory system to continue to send blood to my feet when it should have gotten the “off” signal. In other words, the thermostat in my lower extremities was broken. That somehow seemed intuitively correct to me. Exactly why this might be happening to me, no one could say. Whether it would go away, improve, or worsen, no one could say.

I also learned the term “RSD,” which is an extremely severe neuropathic pain syndrome that had some things in common with what I was experiencing but not everything. A few doctors mentioned that I might have it (it’s now called CRPS, by the way). But from what I read about the condition, it was so terrible that I would have done almost anything to have avoided that diagnosis, so not having RSD was perfectly fine with me, although the possibility kept gnawing at me.

Over time, I learned a few tricks for dealing with my weird symptoms. If I found some socks that didn’t hurt me as much as others, I bought many pairs of that style so I wouldn’t run out if they stopped being made. I learned to soak my feet in cold water, to place an electric fan so it would blow on them at night and cool them, to sleep with my feet outside the covers, and to wear the same somewhat-more-comfy shoes (sandals) every day, summer and winter. In winter I wore socks with the sandals as a concession to the cold, and anyway at that point in time I wasn’t going out that much so it didn’t really matter what I wore. I owned a pair of roomy snow boots to put on in winter if I absolutely needed to, and as the sandals got more and more worn and raggedy-looking I wondered what I would do when they finally wore out.

Wearing ugly footwear for many years was the least of my worries, although as a not-yet-old woman it troubled me. I learned to tolerate my baseline discomfort, but the baseline fluctuated in an unpredictable fashion. Many things could flare me up significantly above that baseline, sometimes for months at a time. Once, I went for a massage and the massage therapist rubbed my feet. That was good for about a month of increased burning. I could count on getting worsening symptoms if I set off to do a lot of walking, too; for example at the mall.

One memorable day I was visiting New York City and set off for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The trip involved a walk of about 15 minutes to the subway station, and about ten minutes on the other end to the museum. Then there was more walking inside the museum, of course. It wasn’t a hot day, but after only about 20 minutes at the Met my feet began to burn something awful. What to do? I didn’t want to go home so soon, after making the whole trip to get there. I wanted to see the museum!

So I sat down and pondered my dilemma. I was all alone; it was an off day and no one except a uniformed guard was in the room where I was sitting. So I glanced around, took my shoes and socks off, and sat there for a while with my bare feet on what I suddenly noticed was a marble floor.

Marble is cool. Very very cool. This is known to cooks, who like to use marble counters for pastry or candy-making. It felt wonderful on my feet. Luckily the guard decided to ignore me rather than warn me that bare feet aren’t allowed (are they? I have no idea), and he let me sit there for about a half hour as the burning began to subside and I decided I didn’t have to go home right then and there after all.

Even now, with all the information available online, I am unimpressed by what I find there about erythromelalgia, although it’s 100% more than what was available when I had it. There is very little known about erythromelalgia’s causes even today. Article after article lists the problems that can spark secondary erythromelalgia (for example), but I could find only one that even mentions back issues—and curiously, it seems to think that’s one of the more common causes of the problem (and this was written in 1992):

Calcitonin gene related peptide (CGRP) is a marker for a class of sensory ganglion neurones in the superficial spinal and medullary dorsal horn. Peripheral terminals with CGRP-like immuno-reactivity are found in tissues in which sensory stimulus is usually painful. This suggests a role for this peptide in nocicepter processing. CGRP is also an important vasodilator. A report of a patient with the features of EM was recently published showing increased staining for CGRP in the spinal cord at the point corresponding to the distribution of the perceived burning pain. As approximately 42% our primary EM patients date their symptoms from a time of back injury (unpublished observations) the above hypothesis is attractive.

None of the literature talks about erythromelalgia ever getting better. But I’m happy (very very happy!) to say that mine did.

Its departure was as mysterious as anything else about the condition. The leavetaking happened slowly, so slowly that I didn’t realize for years that what was happening was that it actually was fading away. The first sign of this was a curious one—the burning became more asymmetrical. I would be sitting in my favorite back-friendly recliner, watching TV, and my feet would slowly heat up as they sometimes did. But instead of “feet” it was often “foot.” One foot (if I recall correctly, my right) would get very hot and red, while the other would simultaneously remain relatively pale and quite cold.

This was so bizarre that I had no idea what to make of it. But it was objectively obvious; another person could touch the right foot and feel the intense heat, and then touch the left foot and feel that it was quite cold. The difference in color between them was extremely obvious too. This one-sided erythromelalgia went on for a couple of years, and then even the right foot’s symptoms slowly became less intense and came with longer intervals of relative normalcy in between.

At some point—I really don’t recall when—it occurred to me that my feet hadn’t seriously burned or turned bright red in a long time. I had intermittent symptoms, but they were milder and far more easily ignored.

That was some years ago. Now I travel without the fan I used to drag along with me when I had to sleep overnight away from home. I usually (although not always) start the night with my feet underneath the covers, just like a normal person. But my feet aren’t really normal, even today, all these many years later (over 25). The bottoms feel disordered, a trifle numb but not too bad, and sometimes they get somewhat hot. I still always untuck the sheets at the end of the bed because it helps to be able to stick my feet out of the covers now and then if they get even the slightest bit hot. I have to shop extremely carefully for socks and shoes. Even socks that feel smooth to the hand can feel rough to my feet. Nowadays there are lots of attractive shoes that are quite comfortable, so although my shoe choices are still limited, it’s much easier to find something I like. But when I travel I pack heavy, in part because I have to take so many changes of shoes and types of shoes.

And I wouldn’t even think of walking on sand without protective footwear (see Part II). In fact, I almost never walk on sand at all. But it’s a very small price to pay.

I’m writing this to give hope to any erythromelalgia patients who happen to find it. Nothing I’ve ever read about erythromelalgia indicates that the problem ever just fades away—and yet mine did.

At least, so far.

If the Trump Jr. story wasn’t complicated before…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s certainly getting complicated now.

And you know what? Today I’m going to leave it to others to create some narratives to connect the dots. I’ll wait for more to be revealed before I even attempt to weigh in again with my own ideas.

So see this, this, and this. Take your pick—and there’s plenty more where those came from, and from just about everywhere else.

Oh, and you can refresh your memory on the DNC and Ukraine, as well as Ted Kennedy’s efforts some years ago.

I wonder what percentage of Americans are following this story in any detail, and what percentage just shrug and go on with their lives—usually continuing to either love, hate, or continue with their mixed feelings about Trump and company.My guess is that the majority of people are not following this obsessively but nevertheless have opinions about it that tend to fall in line with their previous opinions on Trump vs. Hillary.

Churchill: life and art at the movies

The New Neo Posted on by

[See ADDENDUM below.]

At Powerline I saw this post by Steven Hayward about a new movie on Churchill called “Darkest Hour,” set shortly before D-Day. It stars Gary Oldman in the lead role, and from the trailer posted at Powerline, it looks good. I plan to see it:

Oldman not only is made up to resemble Churchill facially, his posture is like Churchill’s and he sounds much like him as well, doesn’t he?

Or does he?

When I watched that stirring “We shall never surrender!” speech towards the end of the trailer, it struck me as too histrionic compared to Churchill’s own style. As a child I used to listen to Edward Murrow records that often featured short excerpts from Churchill’s most famous speeches, and I remember that his delivery of the most inspirational lines tended to be more subdued, with a sort of weary acceptance that stalwart courage and perseverance didn’t require shouting or rabble-rousing, it was merely what the Brits would do because it was who they were.

I’ve written about those Murrow records before, here. I think that listening to them as a child was the beginning of my admiration for Churchill. Luckily, YouTube provides many of Churchill’s speeches—and here’s the same speech, the real thing. You can hear the difference (listen especially to the last two minutes, but the exact part in the trailer starts at 11:25):

And notice what he says right after “We shall never surrender!”

[ADDENDUM: In response to a comment below by Brian Swisher, I did a bit more research and discovered that the Churchill recording may have been read later by Churchill, and was almost certainly not a recording of the actual speech in Parliament, where recordings were not permitted at the time. So perhaps we really don’t know what Churchill actually sounded like in the original speech; just in his later delivery:

But many Churchill Speech CDs, and LPs before them, contained only excerpts. Some of these were taken from the BBC broadcasts, but most were recorded by Churchill years later.

No recordings were permitted in the House of Commons at that time, leaving us with two inferior possibilities: Churchill’s broadcast speeches over the BBC, or in some cases postwar recordings, both of which””said those who heard them in the Commons””lack the fire of the originals.

So perhaps Churchill did indeed exhibit a bit more fire in the heat of the moment.’ We just don’t know, but the reports would indicate he did.

However, according to the linked article, there’s no truth to the rumor that an actor made the recordings. It was Churchill himself.]

How did the NY Times obtain Donald Trump Jr.’s emails?

The New Neo Posted on by

The leak is assumed to have been a Trump insider. That makes a certain amount of sense, but I’m not at all sure.

The Times itself has given us a hint in its coverage, according to this:

The story ”” which the [Times] broke Sunday and reverberated Tuesday when Trump Jr. himself published the emails on Twitter ”” leaned on five unnamed sources confirming the existence of those emails. At least two of those came from inside the White House.

Speculation about the sources, especially if they are inside President Donald Trump’s close circle of advisers, added another element of drama to an already-frenzied political environment.

The article goes on to list some possibilities, but admits that none of them make a lot of sense because those with the motive didn’t have the opportunity and those with the opportunity didn’t have the motive. They range from Jared Kushner to Steve Bannon to the Russians to Mike Pence to Corey Lewandowski. Lewandowski makes the most sense to me, because he was fired not long after those meetings and the scuttlebutt is that Trump Jr. didn’t like him and was instrumental in the firing. Corey strikes me as a possibly vindictive sort, but would he really want to take the chance of bringing Trump Sr. down, too? And how exactly would he have gained access to the emails? Did he go to Hire-a-Hacker?

The Times actually said more specific things about its sources, describing them as “three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.” The paper didn’t say whether one of those five actually showed them they emails, or whether they got them from another source. But this description indicates to me that the sources most likely were not actually present at the meeting, which would rule out Kushner and Manafort (neither of whom I thought were the sources anyway).

Of course, the Times could be lying about the description of its sources, but I think the words were vague enough that there would be no need to lie. For example, “two others with knowledge of it” could be just about anyone, including the Russians. The “two others” could even be hackers hired by the Times to get the emails at the Times’ request (so they might have gained their “knowledge” of it from the Times itself, if the Times is really trying to be cagey here). It’s those three “advisors” who had been “briefed” on the meeting whom I find more intriguing. Note that it doesn’t say “advisors at the White House,” so it seems to me they aren’t necessarily part of the staff there and may even be somewhat distant from the administration. “Advisors” covers a lot of possible territory and a lot of people. But it may not include Corey Lewandowski, who lost his “advising” position long before Trump ever got to the White House and should therefore have been designated as a “former advisor to Donald Trump.”

The wording of the Times’ description of the leakers is actually a bit odd. Why would advisors to the White House be briefed on the Trump Jr. meeting? It’s been a year since the meeting occurred; what possible reason could they have had to be briefed recently, before the story broke? Or were they briefed a long time ago—and if so, what reason would they have to disclose the information to the Times now?

I’ve come up with a theory. It’s not a great one, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment. I think the “advisors” may not be particularly close to the president. They may even be people who are in the positions they’re in as holdovers from a previous administration (such as the head of the FBI, who may or may not count as an “advisor” but after all he does report to the president). The context in which these people might have been “briefed” could have been as a result of the process of some of Trump’s aides getting security clearances.

This is what I’m talking about:

Manafort and Jared Kushner…each recently had to disclose the meeting to the feds, Kushner as a condition of his security clearance and Manafort to federal investigators probing the Russia matter.

If they did disclose the meeting to “the feds” (and which feds?) that opens up a lot of possible names of people who had been “briefed” on the fact that there was such a meeting, and many of those people wouldn’t have been Trump-friendly and could tell the Times. I’m not sure whether any of those people could be called “advisors to the White House,” but they’d certainly fall under the heading of “others with knowledge” of the meeting. Then, after the Times is informed of the existence of the meeting and the emails, the Times (or someone else at the behest of the Times or the of leakers) hacks the emails or gets access to them through intelligence sources friendly to the “Resistance.”

That last bit—gaining access to the emails once they were known to exist—may have taken some time. That could have accounted for the delay in the story.

If you have a better theory, feel free to offer it.

I love this suit of Melania’s

The New Neo Posted on by

Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, I said that one thing I planned to enjoy was Melania’s fashions.

And so I have.

I especially love the simple, elegant suit that Melania wore today on her visit to France. Not everyone can wear these midi skirts; it helps to be tall, and Melania is almost six feet tall even without her heels, so she can wear it with tremendous panache (hey, that’s French!).

I feel for Macron’s wife Brigitte having to stand next to her. Not only is she about fifteen years older than Melania, but she’s so much smaller she would look like a pipsqueak in comparison no matter what she wore. But I see her choice as especially infelicitous. A miniskirt? Why? I know she must think her legs are her best feature (I share that conceit about myself) and the legs tend to be the last thing to go, but miniskirts except for the most casual of occasions are not flattering to those over 60. Maybe not even for those over 50. They make us look somewhat desperate, I think.

Note also, the lengthy discussion of the various handshakes. This seems to be a relatively new obsession that arrived shortly after the election:

Dueling health insurance reform bills from the GOP

The New Neo Posted on by

Republican senators Lindsay Graham and Bill Cassidy have rolled out their proposal:

Graham and Cassidy, who have been working closely with former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, argue that one of the main reasons that Republicans are having such a hard time agreeing is because they are working from the Obamacare template — particularly federal control of health insurance.

“The reason we can’t pass a bill is because we are trying to do it in Washington, so stop it,” Santorum, a CNN contributor, told CNN. Both senators agree that the key to making their plan work, is giving states flexibility. “A blue state can do a blue thing, a red state a red thing,” Cassidy said. “My state is going to repeal and replace Obamacare with something that gives power to the patient, but that starts with us giving power to the states.”

Basically, the bill would do a very Republican/conservative thing, which is to give the power back to the states. However, it would also retain some of the Democrat/liberal things from Obamacare, such as keeping in place the taxes that support Obamacare (but giving the revenue to the states, which is a more Republican thing), as well as a nation-wide ban on considering pre-existing conditions. Graham also said that the retention of the taxes might be temporary: “‘It may be that those taxes that are being kept will be eventually repealed, but it will be done as part of comprehensive tax reform, not as part of this,’ said Cassidy.”

They added that they are also supporting the McConnell effort, but putting this plan out as an alternative, and that we’ll “see which one can get 50 votes.”

More details at the link.

Not a bad compromise, in my book.

As for the McConnell plan, here’s a summary of the new provision adopted after a suggestion by Ted Cruz. It gives a lot more choices to the consumer, including catastrophic plans as one option, as long as insurers offer at least one plan that conforms to Obamacare as well. Subsidized high-risk pools would handle the pre-existing condition situation.

I’ve written several posts on the earlier GOP proposal and many on the health care insurance conundrum as a whole. To me, both of these bills would be improvements over what have now. I have no idea whether either of them will be able to pass. The MSM would have us think the answer is “no way.” But although I think the GOP will indeed have trouble getting behind one of the plans, I also don’t trust that the MSM is doing much more right now than stating its own wishful thinking. Prognostication has not been their strong suit lately.

Those three train heroes will portray themselves in the Eastwood film

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a movie I plan to put on my “to see” list:

In an unconventional move, Clint Eastwood has tapped Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, and Spencer Stone to play themselves in his next movie, “The 15:17 to Paris.” The film will tell the story of the three Americans who stopped a terrorist on a train bound for Paris…

Following the news that this would be his follow-up to the box office hit “Sully,” Eastwood began a wide-ranging search for the actors who would portray the three Americans. The studio and Eastwood made their choices but at the 11th hour decided to have Sadler, Skarlatos and Stone portray themselves.

Sources say that, while the three will have good-sized roles, the film is expected to begin during their childhood and show their friendship leading up to the moment that changed their lives. That means the roles will not be full-on leads.

I don’t think Eastwood would do this if the three hadn’t screen-tested well. After all, he wouldn’t want to make a bad film. I remember how telegenic and articulate I thought they were, in addition to their heroism and modesty and just plain niceness, when they were in the spotlight doing interviews.

Politics and morality

The New Neo Posted on by

Every now and then someone in the real (not cyber) world asks me what I do, and I tell them I write. A smaller number of people will then ask me what I write about.

Because I don’t like to talk about politics very often, I will sometimes answer “Oh, it’s eclectic. Lots of things—the arts, science, nature, world events…” and I trail off, hoping they’ll stop there. But sometimes it goes further. Or sometimes I’m in a more revelatory mood, and I answer “Well, I write about politics mostly.”

A discussion sometimes ensues in which I’m careful to point out that I hate politics and don’t like to discuss it a lot. So, why do I write about it? That’s a hard one to answer, but the best I’ve been able to do is that it’s fascinating (as are the arts, science, nature, world events…).

Which brings us to today’s topic, as revealed by the Donald Trump Jr. episode. But this post isn’t really about Donald Trump Jr. and his emails at all (you’re welcome!); I have bigger fish to fry. It’s about how we judge politics and politicians.

My train of thought was engendered once again by something commenter “Big Maq” wrote:

It is NOT that we have to come up with proof of something illegal, nor do we have to have a perfectly fitting analogy to get to the same point.

It is that what has transpired is something we’d, rightly, very much see as completely wrong if it were a dem who did it.

No, I would not see the same actions as particularly wrong no matter who did it, as I wrote in my post yesterday. But in the larger sense, I don’t think it’s clear why I should see it as particularly wrong, much less completely wrong—except in the sense that politics in general is “wrong,”* [see below] because politics commonly has many distasteful components to it. I have never had a particle of interest in engaging in politics myself, and most people share that feeling. But opposition research is part of the business of politics, and people connected with a campaign are allowed to talk with nearly anyone as long as they don’t do something illegal like bribe them or meddle with voting machines or the like.

We can imagine bad motives on the part of a political player. And we can imagine that, had that person the opportunity, he or she would even be doing something illegal. But unless such illegal actions occur, a meeting like that is not “wrong,” (maybe stupid, given the circumstances? But “stupid” is not “wrong”), nor did the emails suggest anything like bribery was being contemplated.

Now, I’m certainly not against the investigation continuing. Perhaps this activity by Trump Jr. is just the tip of a large iceberg, with the really bad stuff remaining to be discovered. But other than that possibility, I do not find it “wrong,” much less “completely wrong”—except, as I already said, in the same sense that politics is “wrong” (i.e. distasteful, like sausage being made).

As Jerry Pournelle has written:

When I was a campaign manager for Mayer Yorty in the Yorty campaign, I received countless offers of information for sale about the Mayor’s opponent, former LAPD Lieutenant Bradley. I ignored most of them. One or two were intriguing enough that I accepted meetings with the offerer; on at least one occasion, the offer was through a third party, just as in this situation. In that particular instance, I was offered a number of unsubstantiated rumors which I could have someone run down, mostly of crime victims unhappy with Bradley’s police performance; worth nothing, as it happened, but I think I paid $20 for copies of the documents, none of which proved useful. Another time, the information might have been true, but the compiler made it clear it was dirt on Bradley’s daughter who had famously once been arrested for shop lifting in a department store for attempting to leave wearing a dozen or so pairs of new underwear. I quickly stopped that conversation: the Mayor had directed that we would never use anything related to Bradley’s family in the campaign, a policy I fully agreed with.

Another time, I did pay about $50 to a private investigator for documents relating to some investments Bradley had made, but after inspecting them I could not see any use for them.

Although no criminal acts were involved in any of this, I never informed the Mayor or Campaign Director Salvatore about any of these meetings; why would I? It was just another part of the campaign.

(By the way—Yorty was a Democrat, but if Pournelle was a Democrat back then, he doesn’t seem to have been one for a long time.)

This question of politics and morality is one that has dogged the Republican Party in particular for as far back as I’ve been blogging, and probably further. There are two wings on the subject, and they don’t get along very well. Let’s call them the Don Quixote and the Sancho Panza wings. The Don Quixote wing is commonly found in what the Sancho Panza wing calls the GOPe. The Don Q’s tend to be loudly critical whenever a member of the GOP (particularly one more conservative than they) fails to be squeaky clean. The Sancho P’s consider the Don Q’s insufferable, self-righteous, preening, egotistical RINOs who’d rather show us all how moral they are than actually try to win against opponents who are far more immoral than they.

There, did I get the picture right?

The Trump candidacy—and now the Trump presidency—has generated a perfect storm of discord between these two wings. There has been internal discord, too, within the Don Q wing, with some managing to hold their noses and support Trump for the duration of the election in order to beat their archenemy Hillary Clinton. Others couldn’t even do that. And the current Donald Trump Jr. controversy has exposed the same divide.

As for my own point of view—as you might imagine, it’s somewhere in-between. But it’s probably a bit closer to the Panza wing than the Don Q’s, because I think I see politics realistically as a business in which the aim is to win and a lot of unpleasant and not-so-laudable actions are going to be taken along the way. All else being equal, I’d prefer a candidate so wonderful and so charismatic that he or she can be both noble and a winner at the same time. But I don’t demand it, and I don’t get my tonsils in an uproar if it doesn’t happen. In fact, I realize that such creatures are very very rare in the world of politics, and always will be.

Illegality is a different thing, and I don’t defend it. And I try my best to use the same standards for both sides. That said, I prefer conservatives to liberals, and less state control over more, and so in recent years when I vote it tends to be for the more conservative of the options.

[* This discussion of politics being “wrong” in general reminded me of something John Updike once wrote regarding his attitude towards the war in Vietnam. In this post I offered this Updike quote from his essay:

The Vietnam war””or any war””is “wrong,” but in the sense that existence itself is wrong. To be alive is to be a killer; and though the Jains try to hide this by wearing gauze masks to avoid inhaling insects, and the antiabortionists by picketing hospitals, and peace activists by lying down in front of ammunition trains, there is really no hiding what every meal we eat juicily demonstrates. Peace is not something we are entitled to but an illusory respite we earn. On both the personal and national level, islands of truce created by balances of terror and potential violence are the best we can hope for.

Updike said that in an essay he wrote in 1989. You can find the entire text of his essay here. I strongly urge you to read it if you haven’t already.]

Let’s make an analogy

The New Neo Posted on by

There is no doubt in my mind that if Chelsea Clinton (the best analogy I can think of) had done something similar during the campaign to what Donald Trump Jr. did, the coverage and outrage would be minimal in the MSM. The press on the right would probably try to make something of it, but with a lack of success.

Commenter “Big Maq” here has expressed the idea that, if the same set of circumstances were happening only the alleged perps were on the left, most people on the right (including commenters at this blog) would be up in arms about it:

Nothing illegal [that Trump Jr. did], some [on the right] say. Well, we know very well that many of the same folks are frustrated with the the same kind of “legal” reasoning of right and wrong on the left.

Nothing illegal with the AG meeting with bill clinton on the tar mac. Hey, “where’s the proof?”

These are the same people who probably chant “drain the swamp!”.

I’ve noticed ever since I started immersing myself in politics over a decade ago that both left and right defend their side and attack the other for similar offenses. That’s human nature, of course. That’s why I especially value the opinions of the few people I’ve seen on either side who seem to really be looking at things objectively. Jonathan Turley has been one, Andrew C. McCarthy another, and Alan Dershowitz has sometimes (not always, by any means) been another.

I like to think of myself that way, too, but of course my own objectivity about myself could easily be called into question. But I think that political “changers” have a bit more of a chance of being objective in that sense, since they’ve looked at life (and politics) from both sides now.

I also have a legal background and I tend to be legalistic—some say, much too legalistic—about a lot of issues and offenses on both sides. Just to take an example, one that you might not be aware of, I have long maintained that Bill Clinton did not commit perjury during the Lewinsky affair (to avoid going into that whole song and dance right now, I refer you to this, and please follow the links you find in that comment of mine). This tends to drive a lot of people on the right crazy, but it is the way I see it and I think I am correct (again, see the comment) although that is not a popular opinion on the right.

Lastly, I want to mention that Big Maq’s analogy—the Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac during the 2016 campaign—is a very flawed one. The discussions on the right about the Lynch/Clinton meeting centered on the impropriety of Lynch’s meeting because she was the AG and because Hillary Clinton was under investigation at the time. It had everything to do with the rules about her special position and the appearance of impropriety. My own post on the subject says as much:

At any rate, we don’t know what was said. However, AGs and people connected with a matter that’s being investigated by that AG are not supposed to have conversations about golf or anything else. They’re supposed to scrupulously avoid any situation that has the appearance or impropriety or offers the possibility of impropriety. Both parties here are and/or should have been well aware of that. Anyone who pretends otherwise is either ignorant or disingenuous.

The repercussions in terms of what will happen to Hillary Clinton are unknown, but the upshot is that in the ensuing hue and cry over the meeting, Lynch has said she will accept the recommendation of the FBI in the matter of the Hillary Clinton investigation. That leaves FBI Director James Comey in a more powerful position than anyone had expected.

I can see no analogy whatsoever in that particular case.